Sorry about the lateness. Technical problems. Also, sorry this video is crazy, but there was little to be done about it. The next one will be a lot more reasonable.
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Latest
December Continues to be Difficult, Episode 2
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A New Direction
Winter is a hard time for weight struggles, with seasonal affective disorder rearing its ugly head, especially as I now live in colder, darker New York. Thus, while I don’t want to go back to Excel charts of calorie counting, I’m adding the accountability of calorie confessional videos. After this first one, I’m going to start posting one each week, edited together from each night’s video. I’ll only divulge what I actually ate if it is somehow particular to my dieting and/or ridiculous (as it always will be on off diet days).
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About Time for an Update
It’s certainly been a while. Everything has changed. I now work at Trader Joe’s instead of Maoz vegetarian restaurant. I have way less time to work out at the gym, averaging 1.8 visits per week these days. My free weights see a bit of action at home though, and the most fun development is that I’ve started having little dance parties alone in my room with some frequency. It’s a lot of fun, moving around however I want to, using the bunk beds (yeah, I sleep in a bunk bed) and other furniture as sort of more interesting stripper pole-esque props.
I also now diet 5 days per week with 2 off days, but I always have to move around the off days depending on what’s going on in my life. On my “on diet days,” I aim for 1200 calories, though I probably wind up consuming 1300-1400 most days. I just can’t have as many calories now that I don’t do as much formal working out. Living in NYC though, I do walk a lot and climb up a minimum of 12 flights of stairs per day, many days climbing 2 or 3 times that.
I keep track of my weekly and monthly weight ranges, and I don’t go crazy if I miss a weigh in day here or there. It’s weird, living in NYC, I often feel as if I’m losing my mind and becoming increasingly more neurotic with each day, but I have also learned how to not be so neurotically fastidious about my dieting, work outs, and weigh ins.
This Week’s Weight Range: 140.3-142
Month so far: 139.8-144.2
Arrrrgh, Frustration in The City
I haven’t posted in a while because I moved to New York City a few weeks ago and have been very busy. That said, I’ve also been dieting my ass off. Unfortunately I can’t claim that literally. Well, not that I want to lose my ass, but you know.
Basically I’ve been dieting 5 days per week now instead of 4, and I’ve been only consuming about 1500 calories on each diet day. This doesn’t seem to be working well. Unless it’s the fact that I’ve run out of multivitamins and 5 HTP pills. I’ve also been working at this one vegetarian restaurant and eating most of my meals from there. And while I have been counting calories and eating mostly vegetables from there, some of it has been fried, so I’m going on a nothing fried diet for at least a week (yes, even on off diet days), and then I think I’ll make “nothing fried” a rule for all “on diet” days after that.
I’m going to buy more of those pills too, but I also think I’ll change my calorie totals to this:
Wednesday: Off diet day, Strength Training, cardio: 300
Thursday: Off diet day, Cardio: 500
Friday = 1800 – ST, and c: 200
Saturday = 1500 – Cardio: 400
Sunday = 1800 – ST, c: 200
Monday = 1600 – C: 400
Tuesday = 1500 – off work out
Because I think I must be going into starvation mode sometimes. This is going to work, folks, it’s. going. to. work.
Nothin’ like a stomach virus
to help you lose a pound or two!
I didn’t weigh in on Sunday, the 14th, since I knew I wouldn’t like the number and also accidentally had some water before weighing in anyway. Okay, I did weigh in after the water and with just pants on, and it was a dismal 143.8, so…I’m trying to forget that.
So I was actually completely “on diet” Sunday instead of doing the usual Friday-Sunday offness, which was in order to make up for Wednesday night at Zenzi. It’s hard to say what that would have done because from 1am-6am I was alternately hovering, throwing up, and vainly attempting to sleep. When I woke up after finally sleeping for a few hours, I weighed in at
3.15: 141.8
So I was back down to what has of late been a common number. I kept trying to get up any time I felt better because I loathe being a lazy bum, but it just wasn’t going to happen. I felt like utter crap. I did keep down the food I ate though, which totaled somewhere between 1000-1200 calories. I also didn’t do my cardio for the day. Check out this morning’s weigh in
3.16: 140.4
Hoorah! Well, being sick sucks, and I think it’s only right for me to lose some weight out of it. Hopefully it doesn’t all come back tomorrow. I am going to try to work out, but I’m still feeling a bit nauseous and weak, so I may modify things a bit.
Oh, also, I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned that I’ve shifter everything forward a day, so that my off exercise day (the day I only do an ab workout anyway), is on Saturday. This makes more sense, I feel, because if I do some drinking on a Friday night, it’d be nice to not have to work out much the next day.
3.17: 140.8 Not bad, then I had an off diet day for St. Patty’s. I’ll have to make up for it this weekend.
3.18: 142.1
3.19: 141.6
3.20: 142.4
3.21: 143.1
3.22: 143.6
Quick Update
I went on a trip and was a little off schedule, so I’m just gonna jump back in every Sunday from now on again. This morning I weighted 142.3.
3.10: 141.8, Then Cami convinced me to go out to eat on a Wednesday night due to Delta Skymiles, an Entertainment.com coupon, and really delicious food (at Zenzi), and though I tried to keep my caloric intake reasonable and did some extra cardio…
3.11: 143.3
3.12: 141.8
3.13: 141.8- Hey, not bad considering I had a beer, some burnt cookies I’d attempted, a bowl of fruit, honey, vanilla wafers, and graham crackers and honey, and a random sandwich last night. Cami and I went out to eat for lunch too (at Cafe 118, which I highly recommend to anyone), but that was healthful and relatively low cal. I’m going to attempt to be “on diet” today. But I’ll be working at the chocolate shop for 6 hours, so we’ll see…
On the Right Track
Monday: 143.2 – As I already mentioned
Tuesday: 142.9 – So on this day, I started taking lactase before any dairy and Beano before, well, every eating event ’cause there’s fiber in just about every meal or snack I have.
Wednesday: 141.8 – Awesome! And I could tell throughout the whole day that my digestion was working much better. The gas is about 6% of what it was just the day before, there’s none of that gurgling uncomfortably around my stomach crap, and I started having 2-3 bowel movements each day! I was just crossing my fingers that the weight loss would continue too…
Thursday: 140.8 – Hooray! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! What do ya know, apparently my body just needed to be able to digest the food I eat.
Friday: 140.2 – The progress is understandably slowing, .6 of a pound is still excellent for a 4th day in a row of dieting. And it’s down from last Friday’s 142.0. Of course I was off my diet Friday. I had a healthful breakfast, then I went to a French place and had an indulgent meal (my sister had a gift card) of bread and butter, a caesar salad, veal, a little potato thing, a glass of red wine, and then Cami and I shared a small creme brulee and a banana and ice cream thingy. And then I had an iced latte. Then I didn’t have much food the rest of the day but did have 4 beers.
Saturday: 141.5 – Didn’t get to weigh in first thing, but oh well. I was pretty good the whole day until at night when for some emotional and financial reasons that are only quasi-logical I had a #1 from Wendy’s (with a Coke Zero, no ketchup or mustard, and with ranch for my fries) and a frosty-chino, which was delicious. Then I accidentally ate a 390 calorie bag of mini oreos. But then I went back to the gym for a third time to tack on an extra 425 calorie work out to mitigate the damages.
Sunday: 141.5 – Not bad at all, especially since last week’s Sunday high was 143.4, I like the outlook of this week, especially if I can act like at least a semi-normal human being today (and there’s really not much junk food in the house anymore after I found that old bag of mini Oreos my sister had. I hope she didn’t want those…)
Also, I still have some cheese in the fridge, so I’m still using the lactase, but I’ve changed my grocery list to non-dairy products. In lieu of cheese, I will buy avocados and hummus (And I think I can even save a little money this way). Every now and then I might buy vegan “cheese” or lactose free/lactase-enhanced cheese, but that stuff is expensive and has a lot of questionable ingredients, so I probably won’t do it often. I will, however, presumably have to take Beano 6 times a day for the rest of my life, but oh well.
Well this is depressing
Last Monday: 143.0
Tuesday: 141.6
Wednesday: 141.2 – Mmkay, mmkay, not as fast as I’d like for a Tuesday to Wednesday, but acceptable…
Thursday: 141.7 – What the fuck??? I followed my diet/exercise program! The only thing I did differently this week was that I started doing a bit of cardio first thing in the morning before eating, which was supposed to burn straight fat. It may have backfired.
Friday: 142.0 – What the goddamnfuckingshit!?!?!?!11!? Again, no cheating! This is when I decided to stop doing pre-breakfast cardio, on the theory that maybe it was putting me into “starvation mode.” I was good most of this day even though it was a weekend day, until dinner when I had a lot of BBQ and half of this super indulgent chocolate dessert.
Saturday: Skipped weigh in, didn’t want to psych myself out, was more or less reasonable this day, of course did work out program (I really should only mention if I actually miss working out since this almost never happens)
Sunday: 142.9, Well it could be worse. I was pretty good Sunday, except at night I had three glasses of wine (I had to use the rest of a bottle up my sister left or else it would’ve gone bad!)…and then I had a beer…and then I found an old pack of 6 Oreos…and then I put PB on one of them…and then I had a little 80 calorie dessert bar…What is wrong with me… :[
Monday: 143.2 – Well this could’ve been worse. Anyway I of course went back to my 1800 calories, and I never take any breaks from my workout program, and I’m doing the extra cardio during the day instead of before breakfast, so I was hoping the scale would drop down a good bit, but…
Tuesday: 142.9 – .3 pounds??? :’[
It’s just depressing because I don’t know what to do. If I add more cardio or eat less food, I’m scared I’m actually going to put my body into starvation mode and gain weight. Yes, I do need to be better on the weekends, and I am, as always, going to try harder next weekend, but the numbers on the scale ought to be dropping much faster during the week when I’m being good! What to do, what to do…
Bleh
Monday: 140.0
Tuesday: 140.1
Wednesday: 140.2
Thursday: 140.0
Friday: 139.5
Saturday: 142.4
Sunday: 143.4
Monday: 143.0
Obviously I was bad this weekend. But I’m back to my diet this week of course. And, due to some advice from a blogger, I’m going to try to do my cardio completely separately from my strength training. I’m also going to try to do at least some of that cardio in the morning before breakfast again, to burn more fat. Here goes!
